16. Haven
Chapter 16
Haven
Why did I get in this car?
I heard the alarm bells clanging in my head like the building was on fire, but I ignored them and climbed in anyway. Yes, I’ve just done something wildly idiotic. And as much as I’d love to wallow in my stupidity, I’d have to stop crushing on my professor.
Bastian drives like an expert. Every move he makes is graceful and immaculate and scarily precise. He only takes his eyes off the road when we’re stopped at an intersection.
We’re as silent as his electric car as it speeds down the college’s tree lined driveway. I’m taking turns watching the trees blur, staring at the car’s gorgeous minimalist interior, and peeking glances at Bastian’s arm muscles as he steers.
He took off his jacket midway through class today. Coincidentally, around the time I began zoning out.
As if reading my mind, Bastian says, “How did you find today’s lecture? Was there enough context, even without reading the assigned chapters?”
The intersection at the end of the college’s drive is a four-way stop, one of them a blind rise. Bastian stops his car to check for oncoming traffic, making eye contact that I break with a nervous chuckle.
“Oh, uh, yeah, it was good. Actually made me more keen to go and read the book.” I hear what I just said and cringe as he pulls into the road. “I mean, not that I wasn’t keen already, just?—“
“Fuck!”
Bastian slams on brakes and swerves to the side. The Tesla isn’t going fast, but some kind of automatic braking system kicks in because we stop so suddenly my head jerks forward.
A truck blasts its horn at us as it whooshes past inches from my door.
My hand is on my heart, blood draining from my face.
“Fuck,” I whisper. “It almost fucking hit us.”
“You okay?” Bastian leans over to me, craning to look at my face. “Haven.”
“Yeah, sorry. Just, just got a fright. Look.” I hold out my hand so he can see me shaking.
“Jesus, he could have killed you.” He grabs my hand, squeezes it, and then snatches his hand away, so quickly I’m even more rattled than before. “Shit like that makes my fucking blood boil.”
He shakes his head as he carefully guides his Tesla back on the road.
At the next intersection, he taps the car’s console. Soothing classical music flows out of the sound system. Chopin’s Nocturne album, from the artwork on the screen. Must be to calm me down, because there’s not a tremor anywhere on his body…and I’ve been looking.
I don’t know why I expect him to head downtown. Maybe because he’s a teacher, and I assume they don’t make megabucks. But he’s only on the main road for a few minutes before he turns into Earl Avenue and we ascend one of the hills Hillside gets its name from.
I turn to stare out the window.
Agony Hollow might be a small town, but I know most of it. Like this road that winds up the side of the largest hill. There’s a steep cliff edge to one side, densely packed trees on the other.
We pass a lookout spot. Nothing more than a small alcove butting right up against the cliff’s edge. A concrete bench, a concrete bin, and enough parking for max three cars.
But the view…God, that view.
The entire town is visible. From the large multi-level homes we’ve just driven past, to more compact townhomes. Strips of businesses and apartments cluster tighter and tighter together as the grid condenses toward Hollow Way, the town’s main street.
The road cuts through our town at a diagonal until it intersects the Agony River at the lower half of the town. Past that, the squalor is blatant, even at this altitude.
Perhaps especially this high up.
I look away, swallowing.
“I’ve heard things are rough down there.” Bastian’s voice is low, a muted hum barely able to rival the Tesla’s tires on the road and the piano music. “Those poor people just can’t seem to drag themselves out of the mud.”
I want to tell him to fuck off. That the streets of Riverside are mud free. Although the same can’t be said for rubbish, roaches, or rodents.
But the way he says it, it’s not like he’s pitying me. It’s like we’re sympathizing together.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ve never been up Earl Avenue before?”
“Not past Lookout Point. Thought there were only hunting lodges up here.” I grimace at the thought. I went once, with my dad and uncle, but that was years before the remaining Lees fled Agony Hollow. I didn’t have a choice, and God, I wish I did.
“Not a big hunter. Noted.”
I huff, smiling a little. “You wanna talk about cruelty?”
“Debating the topic of my thesis with a freshman. Hm…” The little hum he makes is both sexy and condescending. “I guess, since we have nothing better to talk about…”
“Jerk!” I punch him on the arm before I realize what I’m doing.
But thank God he only chuckles as he turns off Earl Avenue into a much smaller street that cuts through the firs covering these hills. The angle of the road changes, inclining even more than before.
We’re leaving civilization behind.
No more houses around. Just trees, and those growing denser as the road winds up.
“If I see you headed for a hunting lodge, I’m jumping out of this car.”
He laughs. So wild, so beautiful, it makes me blush. Or maybe it’s the fact that I could make a mature, intelligent man like Bastian Rooke laugh.
“You think I could be that cruel to you, sweet girl?” There’s still laughter in his voice, but he stiffens and throws me a quick glance. “Sorry. That was inappropriate.”
I wish I knew how to turn the AC down in this car. I’m starting to sweat again. I don’t dare speak, because I know I’ll stammer, and then blush. So I just turn to look out the window again, trying to concentrate on the glimpses of Agony Hollow peeking through the trees.
Again, my professor seems to read my mind.
Bastian rolls down his window, turns his face into the cool wind that surges inside, and inhales a deep breath. “I love that smell,” he murmurs. “If they could bottle this stuff, I’d swim in it.” He leaves the window open, and I silently thank him for how it cools the Tesla’s interior. Although it’s shocking how quickly the temperature has dropped since I got in.
There’s a definite chill in the air. If you can’t handle the cold, move down to Riverside. Some days the woods felt more like a jungle. That creek, a jungle.
I wonder where Kai lives now. We sent a few letters to each other after he moved out of Riverside, but I’ve never been to his house before. I was too busy working at the convenience store, and my dad couldn’t afford bus fare to get me all the way across town. Kai only got a car late into high school, and even then, he was too busy with his sports, or his school work, to come visit me.
Except for that one time?—
“Have you lived here all your life, Haven?”
I like the way he says my name. It sounds so smooth and eloquent on his tongue.
“Uh, yeah. Pretty much. You?”
He chuckles. “Oh no. New York, originally. Then the west coast for a while. But it always felt like I was surrounded by strangers wherever I went. So many people streaming past you on the street, day in, day out, but you’ll never see the same face twice. Never get to learn their stories. What makes them tick.”
“Never thought about it like that,” I murmur.
“You don’t know what you don’t know, Haven.” He inhales another deep breath, huffs it out with obvious enjoyment. “Never thought I’d like small town living until I got here. But this place? All these lives, so tight-knit. Like a tangle of wool. Everyone’s connected. It’s fascinating.”
We turn onto a smaller single-lane road. This one cuts straight through the trees like an arrow until a sharp turn takes us out of sight of the road.
Bastian’s done a lot to make me feel comfortable, but unease still trickles down my neck like a bead of ice water.
Nowhere to run. Not that I’ll need to.
No one to hear me scream, if I had to.
Just me and Bastian.
The road takes another sharp bend. A house emerges from the forest. Whoever built it was a genius. Despite harsh geometric lines, gleaming reflective windows, and its pitch black solar panels, the dark concrete seems to blend with the pale trunks of the trees forming its backdrop.
Bastian stops the car, and I lean forward to take it in.
“Well, it’s definitely not a hunting lodge,” I murmur.
“Sit tight. I’ll be right back.”
Should I be insulted he doesn’t ask me inside, or relieved that I’m not pushing my stupidity to a whole other level?
He’s barely taken two steps from the car before he stops, hesitates, and then walks back. Ducking his head inside the car, Bastian leans his elbows on the rim of his window as he studies me.
“Unless you wanted to come inside,” he says, flicking his hands. “No pressure, of course.”
I swallow. “What if I go in there and you have a hundred animal heads on the walls?”
“No taxidermy, scout’s honor.”
Bastian smiles.
Like truly, widely, warmly smiles. That’s when I know I’ve fallen so far down this fucking rabbit hole, the only way I’m getting out is if someone tosses down a ladder.
But apparently those are bad luck, so…
“I do make a mean cup of hot cocoa, though.”
We’re both adults here.
I could murder a cocoa and mount the cup on my car’s dash.
“Mini marshmallows?”
Bastian tilts his head, his smile changing into a smirk. “Only one way to find out.”
We both turn at the sound of thunder rumbling in the far distance.
Both turn back to each other.
“Forget it. Zeus has spoken. I’ll be back in a sec.” Bastian leans back, tapping the rim of the window. I watch him until he’s almost at the black slab of his front door.
I throw open my door and yell, “I can drink really fast!”
Bastian spins around, shaking his head. “I strongly suggest you don’t add that to your LinkedIn.” Then he flicks a hand. “Well? Get in here.”